Take Your Results to the Next Level (Day 30 of 30 Days of Getting Results)

“The true meaning of life is to give our life meaning.” — Tate T. Weber

Your Outcome: Review the basics of the Agile Results system and set the stage to take your life to the next level by exploring more of the Agile Results principles, patterns, and practices.

I wanted the end to be a good beginning … for the rest of your life. Well, here we are. It’s day 30 of 30 Days of Getting Results, based on my book Getting Results the Agile Way. It’s been 30 days since we started and you can browse all the lessons at 30 Days of Getting Results. Revisit them when you need them, or share them with friends and family to help give them the edge.

I hope one of the most important ideas that came across during our journey together is that you are your ultimate investment, throughout your life. Investing in yourself is how you turn your world around and how you turn other people’s world around. It breathes spirit into life and it’s contagious.

At the end of the day, you are the one that makes your life happen. You are the one that takes care of your business. Whether you’re getting your game on at work or taking care of your business of life, I hope that Agile results can help you succeed far beyond your wildest dreams. It’s there to enhance you and help you unleash what you’re already capable of. Everybody deserves a chance at “the good life”, and this is the ultimate toolkit that I can give you that can help you make the most of what you’ve got.Write Your Story Forward … A Day at a TimeAs a reminder of what Agile Results is, it’s a simple system for meaningful results. You can use it to step up your game and support you for the rest of your life, in everything you do. It gives you an extreme advantage by giving you state of the art practices from a variety of disciplines for improving your thinking, feeling, and doing. I know many parents who are using Agile Results to help their kids improve their focus, their energy, their time management, and basic productivity. I know companies using it to help drive change and to help build a rhythm of results for their teams. I know many people that are using Agile Results to get a new lease on life. The common theme behind the system is one simple ideas:

… Be the author of your life and write your story forward.

By using three stories to drive your day, your week, your month, and your year, you take charge of your life, and you live life on your terms. It helps you be who you want to be and create more of the experiences you want to create. By spending the right time, on the right things, the right way, with the right energy, you unlock a powerful combination for your life that unleashes your best possibilities and helps you make the most of what you’ve got.

Back to the Basics

The basics work and they’ll support you. Let’s do a quick recap:

You can use The Rule of 3 to avoid getting overwhelmed.

You’re the author of your life and you can write your story forward, one moment or one day at a time

You can feel strong all week long, by playing to your strengths and spending less time in weaknesses and things that drain you.

You can do something great and make it a month long project. Great things can happen in month-long packages, and it’s a way to rock your world, a month at a time.

Monday Vision, Daily Outcomes, Friday Reflection is the BackboneEach day or each week is another way to get the system on your side. All you have to do is remember this simple pattern:

Monday Vision – Identify three stories or outcomes you want for the week. This sets the stage.

Daily Outcomes – Each day, identify three outcomes or stories that you want to achieve for the day.

Friday Reflection – Each Friday, identify three things going well and three things to improve.

I wanted a system that was easy to adopt and immediately get the benefits, and that if I fell off, I wanted it to be easy to hop back on. The system is super simple to get back on if you fall off. On any given day, simply ask yourself, what are three outcomes you want for the day, and you’re back on saddle again.

Where to Go from Here
Oh, the places you’ll go. For your journey for the rest of your life, take the system with you and get the force on your side:

Read the book – Getting Results the Agile Way at http://GettingResults.com

Explore the Agile Results Knowledge Base, and be sure to browse the visuals. I find some pictures are worth a 1000 words.

For inspiration, read the testimonials and some of the stories of adoption and real-world case studies.

If you had a chance to go through Day 27 – Do Something Great, hopefully you have something in mind that you are excited about and ready to tackle. I have something that I’ll be working on, and I’m looking forward to cranking things up.

27 COMMENTS

thanks jd… it was great to have journeyed this with you along the way and i can say that my mental buzz has transferred to paper and action… for years my head was just about to burst with thoughts that never translated to action

it’s been very helpful…framing things in perspective. i might have known all these in the past but shifting focus has reframed things and changed the bic picture

Your site came up through a link from Craig Harper’s site and I’ve been visiting for a while, but this is the first time I’ve posted. I just wanted to say thank you for what you’ve written, and to let you know I’ll be putting the theory into practice. Congratulations on finishing the book!
Best wishes
Catherine

J.D., I enjoyed the last two posts you shared. Lately,I keep coming across STYLE, and phrases like Become Your Own Role Model, and so this still feels in theme so much as you share — Create an atmosphere, friendly environment for You to thrive, and that our ultimate investment is our self. I also like what you said about Writing Your Story forward one day at a time. It really brings the power to the present and lets us unwrap it as new usable gifts! 😉
I am certainly enjoying this new ride!
Thank you for sharing the hosted experience of Agile Results! I did learn a lot from the days that I could attend.
Have a great week! ~Jenn

Hi JD,
This really is a wealth of practical knowledge that anyone can put to work for them… well done. Indeed, we are all writing our life story. We can write a story filled with tension and melodrama or a fabulous story of burning desire and inspired action.

@ Riza — That’s what I like to hear. Turning mental buzz into paper and action is a very effective way to follow your path, and I look forward to your one thing!

@ Catherine — Thank you. I look forward to you results and it’s the journey that makes the ride worthwhile.

@ Jenn — Thank you. I suspect I’ll be focusing even more on mental models in the near future as a way to model the path forward. I’m finding a recurring theme where getting the right mental model in place, creates a glide path for everything else. With a model and a map you own your path.

@ Nadia — Thank you. Authentic is always the way to be.

@ Rob — Thank you. It really is about deciding what you want your life to be about. For me, I’m going for inspired action.

@ Alik — Thank you. I thought it would be especially reenforcing to use the system to teach the system, a day or story at a time. It looks like leading by example was helpful.

Where did the time go? I have lots of catching up to do, but wanted to stop by and say Congratulations on your book. It will not only make a marvelous addition to your other publications, but will undoubtedly help many as they strive to live a fuller life.

I’ll be back to pick up where I left off. Thank you again for sharing such invaluable information. Your hard work has not gone unnoticed.

@ Barbara — Time sure does fly. I hope you enjoy the lessons as you make your way through. I tried to keep them modular and concise, and I really focused on sharing the key insights that help us get faster, simpler, better results … but most importantly … “meaningful” results (results that actually matter to us.)

@ Karl — Simplicity is the breakfast of success. I’ve noticed that the simpler the system got, the more useful it actually has become. In the early years, it was complex and very specialized. Over time, I leaned it down to just the essentials, and it actually create more synergy.

@ Lauren — Thank you — I hope the system serves you well. It’s designed to help you go to battle with any challenges in life, or just as easily help you make the most of Sunny days, or playful ways.

J.D. Congrats on what you have put together here. It seems to be amazingly helpful and really provides a great road map to change and making your life into what you desire it to be. I thought this was a great day 30 and very inspirational and motivational. That Vision, Outcome and Reflection practice you recommended sounds amazingly powerful. Thanks for always passing along some of the greatest information. There are so many good things that stick out from your posts in this series and I am still saying my one liner daily about what I want to achieve 🙂

This sounds fantastic, JD. I’d like to commend you on all that you have done so far. You’re amazing.

Creating a system that is easy to adopt to and to reap the benefits, and one that is easy to hop back on if a person deviates is, I believe, crucial to its success. Less room for “failure” and greater potential for people to make this a natural way of life. Excellent.

@ Sibyl — Thank you. The Vision, Outcome, Reflection pattern is really the backbone of the system. It’s helped me through thick and through thin, and it’s easy to teach others. I learned long ago that if you can change a day, you can change a week, and once you change your week, you’ve structured yourself for success.

@ Hilary — Thank you. The bandwagon is always here and there’s always room … savor the lessons at your own pace. I plan to take some of the topics even deeper, based on feedback from readers.

@ Sandra — Thank you. It was a heck of a ride. Having a monthly theme helped me stay strong. One of my mentors taught me long ago to chunk things into themes to help make meaning and to avoid overload. it works like a champ.

@ Davina — Thank you. I think this is an area where I can really help people learn some key skills for getting results, or at least help them get the system on their side.

what a great idea, J.D!
**I’ll be focusing even more on mental models in the near future as a way to model the path forward. I’m finding a recurring theme where getting the right mental model in place, creates a glide path for everything else.

I have to say that your rule of three is just awesome. And focusing on outcomes is something that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. The systems I’ve been using help me to manage activities and projects but it’s good to think about the outcomes of those activities to make sure they need to be done before doing them.

Also, thanks for sharing this information free.

And please make a print version of your book on Agile for personal time management. I really prefer reading books that I can hold in my hand. The Wiki says the print book will be available any day now. Can you hurry it along? 🙂

wow!!
this has been an epic learning adventure for me.
they say the human mind is like a parachute-it functions better when it is open and thats the mindset i started with from day one till 30 and boy haven’t i learnt alot.
thanks a bunch for this momentous post that i have started applying in my day to day life with already positive results:-)

I just finished the first round of reading and learning from your 30 Days of Getting Results. My productivity has visibly improved. Two of my favorites right now are “Start-up & Shut-down Routines” and “Baseline Schedule.” It helped me to find my “Strong Hours”, but I haven’t identified “Creative Hour” and “Power Hour” yet…

I am going to go over the whole exercise again next 30 days to review what I learned, find new insights and where I might be able to improve more, and capture what I might have missed in the first round. I have a feeling that I will need go over it at least few more times to say, “I got it all!” Yes, I will be reading your other articles 🙂

One of the simplest ways to build the Agile Results habit is to add 3 reminders to your calendar:
1. Add a reminder on Monday Morning. Call it Monday Vision: “What are your 3 Wins for this week?”
2. Add a reminder to each day. Call it Daily Wins: “What are your 3 Wins for today?”
3. Add a reminder to Friday: Call it Friday Reflection: “What are 3 things going well? What are 3 things to improve?”

You can prompt yourself to new levels of amazing personal productivity.

The second round of Getting Result was as amazing as the first round. Some exercises are on-the-go kinds that I could get started and see results right away. But it takes daily effort to keep the results coming…

Some of other exercises were really tough…I had to keep coming back to it, or give it incubation time to observe and learn, contemplate, analyze, and make some tweaks. Perhaps it’s like difference between charcoal drawing, water painting, and oil painting.

I am going to do it again for the third time, starting tomorrow. I now know where I can take it easy and which exercise need a whole a lot more time allocated for it. …still learning… I really appreciate your daily feedback, big time. It really encouraged me and motivated me to keep going. I am definitely the candidate for the exponential results. I am looking forward to use it for my kids in the future.